Matthew Hurst
@stubsackfiction
Read my twisted, funny retro murder mystery based loosely on my childhood, told through the medium of the village newsletter, at fupperynewsletter.substack.com matthewhurstwriting.com
Read: Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe 📚Scandinoir in central Ontario. Scanadia-noir? Jaded small town detective catches a religious nutjob serial killer. Thoughtful and atmospheric. #booksky #books #readingcommunity
Read: Next of Kin by Kia Abdullah 📚Aunt kills toddler nephew. It’s and accident. Or is it? Kinda courtroom, kinda psychological, thriller. Fast, tropey read, which is not a bad thing. #booksky #books #readingcommunity
Read: The Age of Wonder by Holmes, Richard 📚British scientists and breakthroughs in the wider culture where they happened, from about 1760 to 1830. Sounds pedestrian but it’s rivetting storytelling. #books #readingcommunity #booksky
Read: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 📚Gleefully weird and Vonneguts gonna Vonnegut. He seems to slip under the ‘problematic’ radar with some of his language. He’s using it to making a point, but that doesn’t always stop the Bad Word Police. So it goes. #books #readingcommunity #booksky
Read: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 📚Very, very belatedly read this and remembered how weird and good Vonnegut is. Grim, black humour and immensely readable. So it goes. #books #readingcommunity #booksky
Graham Greene made spy novels respectable, but he (probably) never stopped spying himself. I interviewed the director of the Graham Greene Festival about Greene’s writing, spying, and friendship with Kim Philby. #books #booksky #readingcommunity spybrary.com/graham-gr…
Pulp Asylum has just published my latest short story, The Man Who Said Too Much, which features an ice storm, stealing old chairs, and a Russian genius. Read it here: bit.ly/4y6ypBF #crime #thriller #amwriting #writingcommunity #writersky
Read: Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum 📚 on audiobook, which came out two years ago. So much of what @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu says about countries run by greedy narcissistic bullies could now be said about the US. #booksky #books #reading
Read: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe 📚Fantastically researched especially the bits the TV series smoothed over. You do wonder exactly why Adams hasn’t sued over the allegations it makes about him. #books #booksky #readingcommunity
Read: Pearl by Siân Hughes 📚Hughes is an award winning poet, and it shows, in a good way as her narator writes intensely and immersively about her mother’s death. As someone who felt no cause to grieve my own mother’s death, it was… informative. #books #booksky #readingcommunity
Read: Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell 📚Big, detailed, accurate and gruesome. Also a cracking story (though not exactly genre-expanding). Great for immersion… #booksky #books #readingcommunity
Read: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow 📚Freshman outrage at the shock of big companies being unscrupulous about how they make money. Nothing you can’t hear him perform any day of the week for free. #books #booksky #readingcommunity
Read: Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius 📚Drips realism and apparently the CIA uses it as an exemplar of Middle Eastern espionage. The detail draws you in and the conflicts between ethnicities and sects is tragically still relevant. #booksky #books #readingcommunity
Read: Golden Hill by Francis Spufford 📚Dark smart pastiche of Fielding, Sterne, etc, in late 18th century New York, but there’s more to it than just quality fanfiction. The characters are ludicrously alive and you can smell the horse shit and ambition. #booksky #books #readingcommunity
Read: The Unwanted Dead by Chris Lloyd 📚 Juicy atmospheric procedural set in Paris just after the Germans marched in during June 1940. Not spies, but feels like Furst, Gerlis, Robert Harris. #booksky #books #readingcommunity
Read: Everything We Do Is Music How 20th-Century Classical Music Shaped Pop by @elizabethalker.bsky.social 📚Wonderfully nerdy cross referencing of pop music with ‘serious’ avant garde, which took my listening down many weird and, it transpired, joyously unlistenable rabbitholes. #booksky
Read: Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie 📚Fergie/Andrew bio- readable etc. but most of it’s been in the media already. Brings together the astonishing extent of their ligging and fosters a sense of righteous outrage. #booksky